Bill Jowers scrubbed through the security cam footage one more time. They had the thief on three feeds, but it was the same deal as all the other stores he’d hit: no face, no way to identify him. He walks in, grabs it, and walks right back out. It was the same way he’d stolen thirty-six laptops from twenty different Best Buy locations over a period of three months. The company had no idea who he was. Bill gazed at the clump of black pixels where a face should be. “It’s not about the laptops,” Bill whispered. “It’s about the chase.”
“Excuse me?” asked one of the Best Buy executives standing in a huddle behind Bill. “I didn’t hear that. What did you say?”
Bill swiveled around in his chair. “What I want you all to do is pull all laptops off the floor of every location in a hundred mile radius.”
“Pull them off the floor?” the Best Buy corporate guy asked. “Do you know how much of our business is laptops?”
“Keep your whole inventory in the back of the stores,” Bill said, tenting his fingers. “Except in Rialto. Store number 2256. Stock up on Lenovo. High end, gaming, dedicated graphics cards. That’s where I’ll catch him in the act.”
“How do you know he’ll go to Rialto?”
“Because that’s the one store he hasn’t hit yet. It’s not about the laptops. He’s in love with the job.”
Bill left the last part unsaid: Just like me.
Bill knew he shouldn’t have taken the Best Buy assignment. He’d been clean for almost two years. As soon as he took one step inside the store and the cold aroma of the computer cleaner canisters filled his nostrils and lungs. It was over; the beast had its claws in him again.
He’d sworn to God and his mother he would never suck another can, but he slurped one down on the drive to his apartment and then a second as he lay spread eagle on the carpet of his living room floor.
His computer chimed that Jezzybelle had logged on to video chat and Bill crashed into his desk getting up. “Jezzy, you’re here,” he said, gasping. “How are you? You look beautiful. How are you?”
“Bill, are you fucked up right now?” she asked, leaning in towards her webcam and squinting.
“I kissed cleaner, but I’m good. I’m back to Earth. I’m feeling so much better than I have been,” he insisted. “I got some gift cards for you. I want to mail them to you. Is that okay? Where do you live?”
“I don’t give out my address, Bill,” she said like she’s said it a thousand times before. “And I’m not sure I feel comfortable engaging in this kind of play with you if you’re abusing computer duster again.”
“But you’re my slim thick goth cutie BBW findom mommy,” Bill protested. “I’m a sick little pig and I have Best Buy gift cards I want to mail to you. What if I go to the ATM? I can empty my account. I’m a piggy. You know that. You know I’m your oinky boy.”
“Why didn’t you get me a digital gift card like I request explicitly in my profile?”
“Because,” he huffed. “It’s more special when comes in the mail.” Bill lowered his head all the way down. The edge of his desk put a crease in his forehead.
Room noise coming through his computer speakers. “Mommy, are you still there?”
She took a second. “I don’t think you should call me that anymore. You need to get some help. Or talk to someone that’s in your life.”
“You’re in my life.”
“Bill, this is a transaction.”
“I have twelve hundred dollars in my bank account. It’s yours–” A ding announced to Bill that the call had closed. A minute later he received an email notification that his money had been refunded.
He taped his nostrils shut and slurped another can of duster. He contemplated a world where he and Jezzybelle could be together forever, in person. Then he thought about the laptop thief and he visualized a gun. He closed his eyes, rotating the image of the gun in his mind until he passed out.
No sign of the thief in six days. The client was getting impatient and Bill’s erratic behavior was starting to spook them. He could not purchase any more computer cleaner from the Rialto location without arousing suspicion, so he ordered a twenty-four pack off Amazon. Last night he drove to Kern County and bought a gun.
Bill took laps around the store all day. He cycled his gaze between the front entrance and the laptop display at the back of the store. He sized everyone up, matching them in his mind to the thief’s blob of pixels, but no sign of him. Bill had laid on the floor each night after work and transported himself inside thief’s mind. That was how Bill knew the would come to Rialto. Even if he sensed Bill’s trap, he wouldn’t be able to resist the job. The game. The dance.
“Are you the guy who’s supposed to catch the stop the dude stealing laptops?” a pretty girl in a blue store polo asked him. She had blue hair, just like Jezzybelle did in one of her most scrumptious photo packs from several years ago. Bill’s breathing halted for several seconds and so the store employee filled the awkward silence. “You keep walking around the store every day and a few of us were wondering.”
“Miss, that is confidential information.” Bill tugged his black polo down off his gut. He gave her a smile and a wink to let her know what was what.
“Oh, okay. I hope you get him,” she said and then disappeared behind a display.
Bill replayed the interaction with the blue haired girl in his head for the rest of the day. The more times he thought about it, the better he thought he came across to her, how important and mysterious he seemed. When his Amazon package arrived, he huffed a can and rotated her image in his mind.
Melanie, so said the blue-haired girl’s name tag, worked the register on day seven. Bill didn’t wander the store. He stood in place and watched Melanie and watched the entrance. At noon, he grabbed two cans of Monster Energy from the fridge by checkout and took them to her register.
“Mr. Top Secret,” she greeted him. “How’s the mission? Or, you know, not mission.”
“Much obliged,” Bill said. “That’s why I do what I do.”
Her face contorted; perplexed, almost fearful. “Huh?”
Bill realized his thought did not connect to hers. “Two of these, please, Melanie. It helps me to focus.”
“Two thirty-two ounce cans,” she said sizing one up. “Wow, that’s a lot of focus.”
“Well, I bought one for me and the other for a beautiful young woman,” Bill said.
She frowned. “Do you mean me?”
“Well, you do imbibe Monster Energy, don’t you, Melanie?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said. Then she cocked her head. “It’s just–I’m nineteen. How old are you?”
Bill hooked two fingers through his belt loops and scooted his jeans up onto his hips. “Melanie, I am sixty-seven years old.”
She slid the Monster Energy back across the counter. “I don’t want one of these right now. Thanks, though. It was really nice of you.”
“Melanie, I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I’ve acted inappropriately. I didn’t think you were going to say nineteen. To me, you appear a lively spirit of thirty to forty. “
“I think that guy is walking out with a laptop.” Melanie pointed to a tall skinny kid in a zip-up hoodie pulled all the way over his head, laptop by his side like a briefcase. Bill hauled himself out of there and after him.
“Hey, wait,” Bill called out, already wheezing. “Stop–“
He caught up to the thief and pulled him around with hard yank of his shoulder. A young guy in his early twenties. Sparse facial hair. A guileless look in eyes. “Did you pay for this computer?”
“Lenuvo Legion Pro 7i gaming laptop,” the thief said. “Intel 24-core i9 processor. 64 gigas of DDR5 RAM.”
Bill took him by both shoulders, his eyes weepy and pleading. “Listen to me. I’m not going to stop you,” Bill said. “Take the laptop. I don’t care. I just want to know why you’re doing this.”
The thief’s eyes looked behind Bill’s, behind his skull, into the distance beyond him. “NVIDIA GeForce graphics. RTX 4080. Twelve gigas.”
“Listen to me, damn you. I canhelp you. I just need to know how you did it. I need to know why..”
The thief turned away from Bill and clicked open the trunk on his little hatchback. “Processor. Thirty-two threads. Two teras hard drive storage. Ray tracing capability.” He slid the laptop box on top of all the other ones. It went right over into the backseat where several others laptop boxes lay in no particular arrangement.
Bill gazed inside at the stacks of boxes, eyes ablaze. “I knew it.”
“Laptop,” he said. Then, pointing to each: “Lenovo laptop. Sony laptop. HP laptop. Acer laptop. Acer laptop. ASUS laptop. Acer laptop. Dell laptop.”
The thief climbed in the drivers seat. Bill put his hand on the door to stop it from closing. He pulled his gun from his waistband and slowly pointed it upward to signal peace. “I’m going to get rid of this. I no longer mean you any harm. Do you understand?”
“Tantō.” The thief produced a samurai dagger from inside his hoodie. “Tokugawa shogunate.” He hacked three times at Bill’s wrist. Bill howled in agony and dropped the gun. His hand hung off the bone while his blood poured out steady like out of a gallon milk jug right into the thief’s open car.
He started it up and hit reverse. The back wheel’s hubcap scraped against the top of Bill’s head as he backed out and took off.
The people from Best Buy Loss Prevention were there in the hospital when Bill woke up. They gave him a round of applause and thanked him for catching the thief. Then they handed him a bonus check for recovering all the stolen merchandise. Bill looked at the spot where his hand had been amputated for the first time. “I’m just happy the good guys won.”
Bill contemplated his attacker’s face. His rival. “What happened to the thief?”
“Don’t worry about him,” the Best Buy executive said in a reassuring tone. “He drove four blocks before he was shot and killed by a pursuing police officer.”
Bill bowed his head and whispered a solemn prayer in a few syllables of Japanese sounds. The first thing was going to do when he got out of the hospital was drive to a Chevy dealership and use his bonus money to buy Jezzy a brand new car.